Follow up!

 Good news!    23 April 2023

Follow up? Well, it's been a few years but the good intentions are still there. Old age and ill health have prevented our return to the villages and people we love, bur email, giffgaff, and zoom keep us in touch. Donations from family and friends help us to direct assistance to where it's needed and deserved.

We help adult women to gain education, up to degree level, we help to employ teachers, and we assist with medical expenses. Small small, perhaps, but well intentioned and we'll keep on  as long as we can. Greetings to our friends, best wishes to you all.

Tom

GOES has provided 500 pairs of protective gloves for use in the village clinic at Mandinari. Many thanks to our local agent, K, for his help in this matter. We continue to help 'small small' - better than nothing!

 GambiaGOES plods on

Slowly. Our ages total 165years and some days it shows! The pandemic has slowed things down, a lot. We continue to support a small school in a village, and an excellent clinic in Mandinari. We also offer help occaisionally to families, usually for education and health issues. This is really how we started out, all tjose years ago. The big difference is that then we were able to travel out two or three times a year, stay for up to three weeks, and lodge in one of the villages and join in village life. We have no regrets - true, there was always more to be done, more oeople to be helped. We didn't, sadly, have a magic wand.

Nowadays, age is against up, as are the fees demanded by the travel insurance companies, some of which now refuse cover at any price. So, in a way, that's a benefit. For the last two years we have directed the money we would have spent on fares, hotels, and insurance into GOES. Because we cannot travel we no longer seek contributions from outside our family because we can no longer say 'Your money was given to Mrs X for her operation, or to the infant school at Y for a new roof' because we didn't actually see the money handed over. 

If there is any risk it must be our risk, not yours.

Best wishes to all who have helped us, both here and there!

Was Bayba, is Small World FS, Still open!

GOES has used Bayba (now Small World FS) for twenty year to send support to schools, hospitals, and village clinics in the Gambia. We have been delighted with the speed such transactions can be made, and never once has a payment gone astray. We are happy to read the assurance that this will continue in spite of the present difficulties. This is an extract from a letter from their CEO;

In light of the uncertainty we all face in our daily lives with the outbreak of COVID 19 (Corona Virus) I want to reassure our customers that Small World remains focused on ensuring that they can continue to send money to their family, friends and loved ones. As a husband and father to 3 children, I know how important it is to provide safety and support to those close to us during these times and we are working hard here at Small World to ensure the health and safety of our employees, communities and their families. Despite these uncertain times, Small World continues to remain open for business - as a technology led business our teams can work remotely with ease. SmallWorldfs.com and our App are available for your use 24/7 worldwide, and globally we have a quarter of a million locations open across 196 countries, bringing together an extensive network of offices, agents, branches and payment points - although I do encourage you to check www.smallworldfs.com for any service updates as some locations may have restricted opening times or temporary closures if they are located close to outbreaks of COVID-19. We are working closely with our partners around the world to minimise the impact of any disruptions on our customers

Explore COVID-19 related topics Free university on-line courses

Explore COVID-19 related topics and collections

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On the road with GOES

On the road with GOES ...

Where does your money go with GOES? Fair question. Let's imagine we're going to find out as we travel to some of the villages together.
We're staying at a small hotel on the Atlantic coast near Kotu village. Turn left out of the hotel and a ten minute walk takes you to the centre of the village. There are a few shops, a market, several hotels and that's it! Back to the hotel, keep going to the crossroads and we'll pick a taxi to Bakau, the next village along the coast. It's a good 20 minute jog but it's a hot day ... Bakau is a much larger fishing village with a fish market, a craft market, several hotels, large shops and banks and a crocodile pool! We've helped one of the large families here with housing, education, and health care. We might as well drop in for a brew of attaya (green tea). The children are anxious to show us their school reports and parents smile proudly ... while we're nearby we'll pop along to the Capital city, Banjul, and visit the hospital. We need to drop off supplies you've donated - medicines, bandages, catheters  and a ream of computer paper.
Where next? Another taxi ride to see one of the schools we help in a suburb of Serrekunda. We drive across Denton Bridge which carries us across Oyster Creek, a wonderful place for bird watching, and eventually turn off the blacktop road onto a series of sand tracks which lead us to Bundung, where the school is. Here we have contributed to the running costs, bought paint, supplied school gates - numerous items which you've contributed to. The children greet us and sing! We tell a story but refrain from song!
 Back in the taxi - one of the yellow Mercedes which transport everything from people to goats and chickens and sheets of corrugated iron and ... everything that requires transporting, and mostly at the same time! Off again, back on the main road, past Abuko nature reserve on the right - must find time to visit one day - and Lamin Lodge Hotel on the left, on the bank of the mighty River Gambia, through Lamin village and turn left by the Taxi Centre on the road to Mandinari. We pass the Lower Basic School which has received a couple of dozen dictionaries given by you and carried free by Thomas Cook, plus a locally purchased sack of rice which the head teacher cooks so the children start the day with happy tummies - and stop outside the village clinic. We've had a long and happy relationship with this place. You'll remember helping to provide a clean water supply? See, there's the tap! This time we're bringing supplies for the medicine cupboard - stacks of paracetamol (for treatment of malaria) and rolls of bandages and a blood-pressure monitor.
 We also pay a quick visit to the nursery school next to the clinic and check that funds we donated last trip have been put to good use. More attaya, then a quick round of visits to friends GOES has helped over the years - school fees paid for children and adults (mainly women who missed out on formal education, house repairs funded - if cement is added to the home-made building blocks it can resist water damage for a much longer time.  So many people here want us to stay and chat and drink attaya and share a meal that we promise to return in a couple of days and stay longer.
 Time to head back to the hotel in Kotu. Our driver, a long-time friend, mentions that his wife is preparing the evening meal and perhaps ... and the children would like to read to us? Of course - you don't mind, do you? You'll be welcome!
 It's much later when we return to the hotel and sit by the pool watching the bats chasing mosquitoes across the night sky. Hope you enjoyed the journey? What's that? Mandinari seems very like Malinding in the story books? I couldn't possibly comment!

We've come a long way!

How it started - the first post.

"GambiaGOES" is the diary of a couple of oldies trying to set up a charity (Gambian Occasional Emergency Support) and struggling with the unfamiliar work of blogging, registering as a Charity, setting up a special bank account, raising funds, getting publicity, staying sane, fixing the printer, editing the newsletter ... resisting the temptation to pack it all in and buy that new car. Then we think of the pure joy on Lamin's face when he was accepted by the University, or of Ebou's relief when he received the cash to enable him to repair his mum's house before the rainy season, or - so many people who need occasional help.

'How will people know what you're doing if you don't tell them?' Good question. I'm rather shy about anything that says 'Look at me!' or in any way looks like boasting. I believe that the vast percentage of people are busy being kind to anyone who crosses their path and in doing so are probably doing ten times more than I can do. That was true at 09.39 hrs on the morning of the 29th of August 2007, when the first page of the blog took to the air, and it's still true today. Still the same car, still the same reluctance to go into details about what we do. I can justify this latter thought;what we do is very personal not only to us but also to the people we help. These people are very often stressed out by their worries about how to make ends meet, how to balance putting food on the table with paying medical bills or school fees for their children. I'm not going to make capital by identifying them and their problems.